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A Tour of Texas Bookshops

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Texas Observer

I teamed up with Texas Observer’s Pulitzer-winning Editor at Large Gayle Reaves to create this charming tour of the state’s indie bookshops, which are finding creative ways to thrive after years of ongoing pandemic life:

Big-city traffic and a resolution on New Year’s Eve of 2020 led Pflugerville resident Kelsey Black to become a bookseller.

An avid reader, she disliked the hour round trip required to get from  her suburb of 65,000 to downtown Austin to browse a bookstore. “OK,”  she told herself, “I think it’s just going to be easier for me to …  start my own bookstore.”

Turned out, it wasn’t easy at all, “but it’s OK because I have now found my calling,” Black said. The Book Burrow began as a pop-up and online business and finally, on August 6, opened  as a brick-and-mortar store. She said the 200-square-foot space has  become a haven for those who don’t feel like they fit in elsewhere,  drawn by the store’s motto: “Embrace your weird.” For her, the phrase  means cultivating love for whatever makes you unique: “Embrace your  gender identity; embrace your sexual identity; embrace your racial  background; embrace your spiritual path.”

Read more at the Texas Observer. This article was originally published in the November / December 2022 issue of TXO magazine.

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